Sarah has been a safety manager for over 20 years. She’s led more toolbox talks than she can count and prides herself on her low incident rates. But one single phone call challenged everything she thought she knew about safety. A routine shift ended in tragedy when one of her workers fell from a height and was critically injured. In that instant, “business as usual” lost all meaning.
Every day, across all different industries, workers face risks with life-altering consequences. As a safety professional, it’s your job to protect your team from serious injuries and fatalities before they happen.
Table of contents
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1. What are serious injuries and fatalities?
Serious injuries and fatalities, often abbreviated to SIFs, include life-altering or life-threatening injuries, and deaths.
A life-altering injury has a significant impact on a person’s ability to function, and will dramatically change their day-to-day life. These injuries include brain injuries, amputations, spinal cord injuries, blindness, hearing loss, severe burns and psychological trauma that may occur following a distressing event.
A life-threatening injury is any circumstance that requires immediate medical attention in order to prevent death. In other words, if an ambulance needs to be called, it’s a life-threatening injury. These include brain and spinal cord injuries, amputations, internal bleeding, severe burns, crush injuries, wounds to vital organs, and electrocution. While every life-altering injury usually begins as a life-threatening injury, a life-threatening injury doesn’t always become a life-altering injury.
The most common causes of fatalities in the USA when looking at the data from 2023 were:
- Transportation incidents
- Falls, slips, trips
- Exposure to harmful substances or environments
- Contact incidents
- Violent acts
The likelihood of different types of serious injuries or fatalities varies by industry. For example, Falls, slips, and trips accounted for 39.2 percent (421) of all construction deaths.
Transportation incidents caused 71.7% (667) of all deaths in the transportation and warehousing sector. Of these, 249 were from crashes with another vehicle, and 193 were from crashes with objects like barriers or trees.
Serious injuries and fatalities are vital metrics for safety leaders to track because they offer insight into the most serious and high-consequence risks within an organization. SIFs are much more catastrophic when compared to minor injuries and near misses. Through tracking how these SIFs occur, you’ll pinpoint weaknesses in need of immediate attention and prevent these devastating events from occurring down the line.
2. The numerous impacts of SiFs
When a serious injury or fatality occurs, the impact reaches far beyond the initial incident. These types of occurrences are not only devastating to the workers involved and those close to them, but they result in various additional consequences.
When you take a moment to reflect on the full scope of these tragedies, it becomes clear why preventing them must be a top priority for every employer. SIFs have the power to jeopardize the entire foundation of a business, rocking it to its very core.
3. Why SIFs matter: the human cost
Behind every serious injury or fatality is a human being. If an employee is killed in an incident, the fallout will cause immeasurable devastation for their family, friends and coworkers. For those who survive a serious injury, life may never be the same. They may find themselves with long-term or permanent disabilities that make them unable to work or even complete everyday tasks. Many survivors will require financial assistance, ongoing medical care, modifications to their home, and regular assistance from qualified professionals (i.e. nurses, carers, doctors, etc).
The psychological issues survivors face from the incident may be just as severe and include:
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Acute Stress Disorder (ASD)
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Phobias (i.e. Agoraphobia)
- Drug & alcohol problems
- Self harming
These challenges have a ripple effect, beginning with the survivor and impacting spouses, children, friends and coworkers who must now face a harsh new reality.
4. Why SIFs matter: the financial cost
Beyond the human impact, serious Injuries and fatalities have financial repercussions for the businesses involved. These costs are long-term, far-reaching, and have the potential to cripple the business altogether.
Businesses may be responsible for covering the medical expenses (surgeries, rehab, therapy, emergency treatment, etc) of the injured party, especially if their accident was caused by non-compliance in the workplace.
Businesses involved in SIFs are often faced with legal liabilities in the form of lawsuits, fines, or even criminal charges if they’re found negligent. These costs will add up quickly when you factor in compensation, settlements, defense fees and much higher insurance premiums following a serious injury or fatality.
For example, in the UK, Network Rail was recently fined £3.75 million (or over $5 million) for their health & safety negligence, which resulted in the deaths of two of their employees. In 2024, Brand Energy & Infrastructure Services UK Ltd were fined £1.6 million after a young employee was crushed to death in what was deemed a “wholly avoidable” accident by the principal HSE inspector.
On top of all this, productivity losses must be factored in. A serious injury or death will disrupt many aspects of an organization’s operations. Work will face interruptions, employees will likely have to be retrained, team morale will suffer, turnover may rise and overall efficiency will take time to recover.
5. Reputational damage and regulatory consequences
News of a serious injury or fatality will spread rapidly. Media outlets, social platforms, and other networks will amplify the incident far and wide. The fallout may have an immediate and lasting impact on a company’s reputation. A single incident can shape public perception and erode trust in a matter of moments.
Stakeholders may question the company’s commitment to safety. Customers may stop supporting a company that is seen as careless or reckless. Partnerships could be broken in attempts for partners to remove themselves from the bad PR. Contracts may be voided due to the fallout. Even employees within the company may lose faith in leadership and feel unsafe at work.
An example of profound reputational damage can be seen in the case of Sonae Indústria’s UK plant in Knowsley, Merseyside. After a serious workplace incident, the facility faced additional events including chemical leaks, fires, and most devastating, the deaths of two workers in 2010. All this led to media scrutiny, public disapproval, and political pressure, resulting in the plant closing in 2012.
Regulatory consequences must also be considered. Agencies like OSHA in the US and the HSE in the UK will thoroughly investigate SIFs and issue fines, citations, restrictions, shutdowns, or criminal charges if relevant. Their findings are often made public, further attracting negative attention and damaging business reputations. In 2025, an owner of a paddleboard business was jailed for over 10 years after being found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter following the deaths of four clients in 2021.
6. How can SIFs be prevented?
While SIFs are catastrophic, the good news is that they are almost always entirely preventable with the right measures in place. These include:
- Identifying hazards within your workplace and controlling them: Use risk assessment software to determine which areas of your business are most vulnerable. Focus on the highest-risk hazards and implement essential control measures to mitigate them.
- Training your workers (and then training them some more): Training should be constant and thorough. When new information emerges, procedures change, or a refresher is needed, make sure workers receive updated training so that each and every employee can perform their jobs safely and effectively. EcoOnline’s Training & eLearning solution makes training accessible and easy to manage, empowering your workers so they can perform their duties safely and confidently.
- Thorough planning of high-risk work: High-risk work should be handled with the utmost reverence. Each employee should understand their role and responsibilities. Using a Permit to Work (PTW) system helps keep the environment controlled and ensures a safe process.
- Creating a plan for emergencies and making sure everyone is aware: Don’t get caught off guard. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Plan for every scenario and use rapid emergency response for safety, even in a crisis.
- Using targeted interventions: Use EcoOnline’s EHS solution to identify trends and patterns. Implement targeted interventions to reduce risks associated with tasks around the workplace.
- Engaging workers in the safety process: Engaging employees in the safety process is key to building a truly safe workplace. When everyone takes ownership it creates a culture where safety isn’t just a box to tick, it’s a shared priority. That’s what a safety-first culture is all about.
Even one serious injury or fatality is one too many. Learn more about the true cost of workplace fatalities when it comes to their financial, legal and human impacts.
